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Bayeslisk comments on White Lies - Less Wrong
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Empty praise is actually useful, for absence of evidence reasons. Especially if the work you want feedback on is the type that that person should be able to effectively critique.
Once you start considering empty praise to be evidence of dislike, you may also want to fake people into thinking you think they like things, because they are probably modeling you using themselves when they decide that lying is best for you. They are not truth-obsessed rationalists, so they probably prefer to think their attempt to trick you was successful. Being asked for a critique of someone's work can be uncomfortable, and thinking you've hurt their feelings is even more uncomfortable.
No, empty praise is still worthless, because Said's cooking and baking not perfect, and there is with near certainty some small flaw, some awkward stylistic choice that could use improvement. Best is the gentle nitpicking of these flaws with a prepended (This is amazing, but) and with the consequent inference that the bread/food/what have you is actually already REALLY GOOD.
There is value to knowing the quality of your work apart from knowing ways to improve it.
For example, "Should I personally cook something for this upcoming potluck, or should I let my spouse do it?"
The problem is that knowing how well you cook doesn't really affect who should cook past a certain basic point of competence, as far as I can tell.
I agree with your point but I think you may have misunderstood Mestroyer's comment (totally understandable, as I found his comment difficult to parse, myself).
I take from your response that you interpret Mestroyer as referring to a scenario where there's nothing in my work to criticize, and I ask for feedback and receive praise, and correctly interpret the absence of criticism as evidence for there being nothing to criticize.
I don't actually think that's the scenario Mestroyer had in mind, based on his second paragraph. (Or was it? If so, then he ought to adjust his terminology, because the term "empty praise" is not appropriate in that context.)